Sonic is back in his first full adventure game since the
little known Sonic 3D Blast a few years ago. Just about everyone
from the Sonic world is here to join in on the fun for this
launch title, so will it be as breathtaking and exciting as past
Sonic games? Lets get onto the review and find out.

The Story

Well, Dr. Robotnick (now known in North America as his
Japanese name, Egg Man, I believe this is one of his last games
to go by Dr. Robotnick) and a host of other famous bosses are up
to their usual antics, and you must stop them, and beat various
levels in a real time 3-D world. Your objective is to collect all
the emblems before a brand new boss gets a hold of them.

Graphics

Well, Sonic is finally in gorgeous 3-D environments, which
look way better than the stuff I saw from Sonic 3-D Blast and
Sonic R on the Saturn. Everything looks great, the opening movie
really got me into this game. The environments look just
marvelous, and you can tell the smallest things apart like
skyscrapers, and the shadows of people in them. The palm trees,
lakes, docks, highways and everything look really darn close to
the real thing. All the Sonic character are beautifully updated
in 3-D models, Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and the rest of the gang
look great, and just like the did before, but more realistic and
polished off. The game moves at a really fast rate, and I believe
I didnt even run into any slowdown at all in the game. The
only thing I believe I had a problem with was the camera angles,
on occasion they got in the way of game play and it lead me to a
few missed jumps and spins, but this wasnt major, and the
visuals are really impressive for a first generation Dreamcast
game.

Sound

All the main characters talk throughout the game and you have
the option of having a text box and voice, or voice only which
makes the cinematic give off a feel for the Sonic cartoon show!
And yes, Tails is annoying as ever as he keeps on shouting for
Sonic to be with him all the time. The background music is
excellent, maybe a little bit on the kiddy side, but fits the
theme for this game well, but theres this one tune that is
tedious where it repeats the lyric, ''I wanna fly high!'' with
some tune youd find off an episode of Reading Rainbow,
which combined, is the most annoying tune I ever heard. Plus in
some of the racing tracks if your racing as Tails, Sonic gets
annoying when he keeps on saying, ''Alright Tails'' whenever you
pass him. But for the most part, the audio is really impressive
for this game.

Game play

The game controls fairly well, and reminiscent of past sonic
games. The control stick allows you to move in true 3-D, which I
prefer a lot more than the past Sonic games. The four main
buttons allow you to do the basic Sonic Stuff like spin and jump.
The game plays just like the rest of the Sonic games where you
collect rings which act as your life bar, and lose them when you
make contact with an enemy. You explore a 3-D world, and in
certain parts you go into stages where you race
through a stage and try to beat as fast as possible, some of
these might be your basic stages where you try to make it to the
end, or in some cases, a race where you try to beat your opponent
first (like in one fun part of the game you go snow boarding).

You start off only playable as Sonic, and you have to beat
action stages with certain goals to complete the stage, after
doing so you'll unlock Tails, and after beating a couple of
stages with him, you'll unlock Knuckles, and the rest of the
crew, including some new characters. The action stages are fun to
play, and it's amazing how they manage to pull off so much
animation at once, there's also some cool racing stages you can
do where you have to beat Sonic by either in a running
competition or on snow boards! I dont know about you, but
Im pretty good at adventure games without using strategy
guides, and I found myself getting lost multiple times and taking
forever to find the next part in the game, which makes it a
little frustrating. All your progress is saved on a VMU, so you
can continue where you left off at anytime.

Replay Value

If you save a Chao (a new character to the Sonic world,
similar to a Tamigoutchi or Pokémon) to your VMU after
harvesting it from the Chao garden, you can play the
mini game, Chao Adventure, on your VMU, it's much
like Tamagotchi or Pocket Pikachu, where you raise your Chao,
building up his strength and so on. You can upload your Chao in
the game and take part in Chao competitions like races! You can
also go to the official Sonic Adventure web site where you can
post high scores. And Im sure youll be playing
forever trying to beat this game and find everything, so Sonic
Team managed to stuff lots of stuff to keep your hands tied.

-: Awkward camera angles causes some bad game play, game can
get a bit frustrating at moments

The Final Ratings Rundown

Graphics: 9.0
Sound: 8.5
Game play: 7.1
Replay Value: 8.2

Overall: 8.2

Rounded to fit GameFAQs Score: 8

Comments

A really great first Sonic game on the Dreamcast, which is
flawed a little bit, but still fun to play. Most Sonic fans
should buy this game because it will most likely live up to their
expectations, if youre not a Sonic nut, I recommend renting
first. Oh, and Im sorry if I missed some elements of this
game in this review, because its been several months since
I played because I sold it to Roadkill (hey, I needed the $20),
but when I consulted him to borrow the game for this review, I
found it he too was a bit frustrated about the game play and
really didnt like the game, so he sold the game for a
measly $8 to Premier Video. But I believe I got everything about
this game down accurately, just make sure you got a strategy
guide while playing.